Hi, Rihanna Dillon here, the host of Ask Penguin. I'm just dropping in to let you know that we've put together a short bonus episode from our visit to Jane Austen's house in October. So as well as recording an episode with the fabulous Jill Hornby and Andrew Hunter Murray, which is available to listen now, we also recorded a walk around Jane's home with Lizzie Dunford, Director of the House. So without further ado, we hope you enjoy listening to this very

special bonus episode as much as we enjoyed making it.

I'm now here with Lizzie Dunford, director at Jane Austen's house, who's going to be taking me on a tour of the property. Hi, Lizzie.

Hello, thank you for being with us. Thank you so much for this. I am so excited. Tell us, first of all, what your job entails. It sounds like the dream job for Jane Austen family. It's a really fabulous job. It's both a privilege and a responsibility.

So as director, I lead the amazing team here that are so dedicated to making sure that this house

continues to thrive, that it continues to care for the astonishing collections of objects that we have.

And also at the very heart of everything we're doing is being a place for people who love Austin,

who love those works, for who her words and her characters and the words are absolutely

embedded within you.

You see as you talk to people who are a part of Austin, they speak to themselves, they come

inwards, they move their hands

towards their chest because she is somebody that is deep in people's psyche as an emotion,

which means that this house has so many layers of significance. It's where all the novels came from,

but it's also where people come back to to connect with that. It's a really hard question for a Jane Austen fan, but what is your favourite Austin novel? My favourite Austin novel is usually the one I read last. I think they are just such brilliant. You know, you go through, Sense and Sensibility is a debut novel. Wow. I mean, when you think about that, it's a debut novel and you look through, you forget. You forget we're to it. It's such a part of our canon. It's such a part of our understanding of English literature. But that was once. Austin was in this house waiting for the release of her debut novel in 1811. And it seems impossible to think of that these days. And you go back in that and it's extraordinary through the bright and sparkling joy of pride and prejudice mansfield park which is so rich and really everything Austin's doing

and all her other novels it's unclouded it's there it's on the page Emma gorgeous they're all

beautiful they're all beautiful did notice you didn't mention Northanger Abbey there but we'll get on to that later later. We'll get to that. I didn't think persuasion either and it's still wonderful. Persuasion is my favourite. That holds the place of my heart, I think. So tell us about the role of the house then in Jane Austen's life. You keep saying this is where all of the novels come from. So I am slightly biased, obviously, but we are fairly certain.

It's fairly clear that this house plays a huge role in Austin's creative and professional life.

She moved in here in July 1809.

The house was already about 2, 300 years old.

We've got gorgeous creaky floorboards that we'll be able to hear as we're moving around.

It's fabulous.

And it was a place of refuge to some extent. There were really strong parallels between this and

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